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When Naomi Osaka lifts her racket on the red clay courts at Roland Garros during the Paris Olympics later this month, it'll represent more than a high-stakes competition for the tennis star.
For Osaka, a four-time grand slam champion, it's an important step in her journey after returning to tennis earlier this year, after stepping away to prioritize her mental health and give birth to her daughter.
Osaka will join gymnastics icon Simone Biles and track and field star Sha’Carri Richardson on the Olympic stage. These Black women athletes at the height of their careers have been vocal about mental health, public critique and other personal struggles. Osaka and Biles needed time away from their respective sports to prioritize mental health. Richardson returned to competition after a highly scrutinized ban from track and field.
They've all bounced back to the world's biggest stage while displaying different levels of vulnerability. Their stories, different yet similar, give viewers a unique image of Black women.
“I always think about this: We weren’t born playing our sport,” Osaka recently told The Associated Press. “We were born the same way as everyone else. I wasn’t born holding a racket. We’re humans first, and we’re athletes as a profession.”
That idea is often overlooked when it comes to Black female athletes, who sit in the shadowed intersection of racism and sexism, said Ketra Armstrong, a professor of sport management and director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity in Sport at the University of Michigan.
“It is critically important that they’re elevated in this way," Armstrong said, “because I think it's helping people to reimagine what Black women are and who they are.”
Biles, Osaka create space for women like them
Biles withdrew from the all-around gymnastics competition at the Tokyo Games to focus on her well-being after what she described as feeling the “weight of the world” on her shoulders.
After a two-year hiatus, Biles, 27, proved to be just as dominant in her 2023 return to the international stage as she was at her first Olympics in 2016. She won the individual all-around title at the gymnastics world championships in October and breezed through last month's U.S. Olympic trials.
“Most athletes are wired to win,” Armstrong said. "They’ve been winning all of their lives. And so oftentimes in their sport, they know how to take a day off. And I think what we’re seeing is they’re realizing that even as life intersects with sport, it’s OK to take a time out.”
Osaka and Biles returns to the Olympics is important in creating space for women who look like them to be just as vulnerable, said Victoria Jackson, a sports historian and clinical associate professor of history at Arizona State University, while “also kind of forcing broader culture to accept" them for who they are beyond what they do in their sport.
Jackson said the trio's journeys show a leadership quality that's innate for Black women, who are often seen as invincible. As a result, they take on added pressure and adopt missions “bigger than them."
“They shouldn’t be in a situation where they should feel like it’s expected of them,” she said. “I think that’s a part of this, too. How many generations of Black women have to ... recognize that they’re taking on something to make the world a better place for people like them and for everyone else, too?
"It feels like there should be an end point at some point. We’re still asking a lot of Black women athletes.”
This phenomenon isn’t limited to athletes.
“Most Black women you talk to, we all feel that similar weight on our shoulders because we feel like we are the most overlooked and disrespected people in this country," said Shaneka Stanley, a senior human resources consultant based near Chicago.
Stanley also juggles caring for her young son, step daughter, aging parents, and brother, who has a mental disability.
“I am every woman for all people in my life,” Stanley said. “I get tired, but I put that cape on every single day.”
‘Condition for brown and Black women is much harder’
Richardson was expected to be a breakout star in Tokyo before a positive test for marijuana at the 2021 Olympic trials. Afterward, Richardson said she smoked marijuana to cope with her mother’s recent death, but that didn't stop the ridicule that followed the sprinter's 30-day suspension from the sport.
Richardson's name was suddenly mentioned in wide-ranging debates on race, fairness and longstanding anti-doping rules.
Tarlan Chahardovali, an assistant professor in the University of South Carolina’s Department of Sport and Entertainment Management, said she has wondered if the criticism that Richardson faced would be applied to a white runner in her position.
"I think the condition for brown and Black women is much harder," Chahardovali said.
Now, Richardson gets a second chance at Olympic glory after one of the most dominant seasons in track and field this year. She'll be a favorite in the 100 meters after winning the race in 10.71 seconds at the U.S. track trials last month.
During her comeback, Richardson has repeatedly talked about resiliency.
“The message is basically understanding and having a deeper love and a deeper care for the talent that I’ve been given," Richardson said. "And I take advantage of it, nurture it ... and that way I can compete and execute when I show up on the track.”
When Biles, Osaka and Richardson took a step back in their careers, “I was so proud of them for living in their truth,” said Marisa Tatum-Taylor, a DEI manager for a large data company. “ … I hope that women across the world receive that message that sometimes in order to show up, you have to put yourself first.”
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Associated Press Writer Claire Savage and AP Sports Writers Howard Fendrich and Eddie Pells contributed to this report.
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